Xen Project Developer Summit

We are building a high-performance NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) platform using Xen. Unlike the conventional use cases of Xen-based systems, such as data center or public cloud, NFV platforms require low-latency and high-bandwidth I/O for virtual middleboxes to handle small packets efficiently. It is challenging to meet such requirements in virtualization environments because of additional virtualization overhead.

We'll discuss a couple of solutions for high-performance packet forwarding, including SR-IOV VF (Virtual Function), shared-memory channels for VM-to-VM communication, resolving the major bottlenecks and latency/realtime issues, taking advantage of the Xen's architecture. We also discuss how the modern hardware-based virtualization features, such as Posted Interrupts, are helpful. Finally we share the best practices when achieving such high-performance systems.
"We are building a high-performance NFV (Network Functions Virtualization) platform using Xen. Unlike the conventional use cases of Xen-based systems, such as data center or public cloud, NFV platforms require low-latency and high-bandwidth I/O for virtual middleboxes to handle small packets efficiently. It is challenging to meet such requirements in virtualization environments because of additional virtualization overhead.

We'll discuss a couple of solutions for high-performance packet forwarding, including SR-IOV VF (Virtual Function), shared-memory channels for VM-to-VM communication, resolving the major bottlenecks and latency/realtime issues, taking advantage of the Xen's architecture. We also discuss how the modern hardware-based virtualization features, such as Posted Interrupts, are helpful. Finally we share the best practices when achieving such high-performance systems.